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IBM BPM vs Red Hat Polymita Business Suite comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

IBM BPM
Ranking in Business Process Management (BPM)
5th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
110
Ranking in other categories
Application Infrastructure (7th), Process Automation (5th)
Red Hat Polymita Business S...
Ranking in Business Process Management (BPM)
52nd
Average Rating
10.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
1
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2025, in the Business Process Management (BPM) category, the mindshare of IBM BPM is 7.6%, down from 7.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Red Hat Polymita Business Suite is 0.1%, down from 0.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Business Process Management (BPM)
 

Featured Reviews

Mohammed Almalki - PeerSpot reviewer
Offers good case management and its integration with process design but there's a learning curve
If you're already an IBM shop with the necessary skills and personnel, then I would recommend using it. However, it requires a yearly investment. So, if you're prepared for that, then go for it. New users will need at least six months to get comfortable with IBM BPM, at least initially. So, there's a learning curve. Overall, I would rate the solution a seven out of ten. Two main reasons: the skillset required to manage it and its integration complexity.
LY
Gives you the ability to design the screens outside the software and connect them as a component with the BPM engine
On the improvement part, I think the documentation for the tool, the official documentation, is not as strong as in other tools. You have lot of community. That is good. But sometimes you need - when you are working on a big client or a critical process - to be certain about certain things. So I think that the documentation for the tool, from the company, could be a little stronger. Also, the size of the team within Latin America. The size of the team that, in each country, knows about BPM - because of the size of Red Hat in comparison with the size of IBM or Oracle - is very little. You have maybe three or four people in the company, in Red Hat Mexico, that know about BPM; and in Peru, maybe one, who also needs to know about five other tools. You have help there, but sometimes you don't need that kind of help. You need to sit down with someone and take a good amount of time and discuss a process to solve a problem. It's a consequence of the size. IBM and Oracle are monsters. They have, say, 100 more employees than Red Hat. That is the problem. But on the other side, the price is good. You could pay four times less, five times less, in an average implementation with Red Hat than with IBM. So there is a trade-off.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"The most valuable features are the integration capabilities - BPM can connect with almost any legacy or advanced system."
"With the tester coach wherein you can interact with the interface while you're designing the process."
"They have some quick-win programs that are designed to come in, they'll bring a developer in and they'll work with your developer to get you started. That's what we did and that worked really great. We got an understanding of the product, we got an understanding of how to deploy the product. And when we were done with that engagement, we were off and running."
"This tool is very useful when it comes to enterprise-grade automation and governmental processes for the security aspects, performance, and reliability."
"IBM BPM is a stable solution."
"Its dashboard is easy to use and very good. It allows us to customize."
"With the Process Center, I can go to one place and view what all the environments are doing."
"Scalability is good. In the time that I have been there, we have added more JVMs to help with the increased workload, so it does scale."
"The main factor that separates Red Hat software from Oracle, IBM, Pegasystems, is the ability that it gives you to design the screens outside the software and connect it as another component with the BPM engine."
 

Cons

"The front end is not customised for a good user experience."
"Stability wavers. We have some opportunities for improvement in this space, especially as we approach our target volume of a million transactions a day. It is tough, because it is not necessarily the product. It is more around the platform and infrastructure to support it, so the connectivity to the database, web sessions, and reverse proxies in front of that."
"I would like it more documentation during the design phase."
"We have been experiencing bad performance and instability."
"I would like IBM to consider including AI-enabled process mining, robotic process automation, and very good OCR capabilities from the computer vision side."
"The major issue is the pricing, which is very high."
"The coaches and the user interface are the areas that can be improved a lot. It is good in terms of data processing, but the UI, scripting, and coaches are not very user-friendly and developer-friendly. Performance is always an issue. The scripting and the pattern that it uses are very tedious for new developers to understand, and it takes time to master it in depth. When comparing IBM BPM with IBM APN, a lot of things are provided out of the box in IBM APN. We don't have to write code or a Java connector to make a functionality work. It would be very helpful and time-saving for developers if IBM BPM is improved in this area to provide many functionalities or drag-and-drop options so that the developers don't have to write the code."
"The stability varies because it involves a lot of other components like databases, so sometimes if something goes wrong there, it can't recover from the fatal errors."
"I think the documentation for the tool, the official documentation, is not as strong as in other tools. You have lot of community. That is good. But sometimes you need - when you are working on a big client or a critical process - to be certain about certain things. So I think that the documentation for the tool, from the company, could be a little stronger."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Licensing is managed by the client, but we know it is yearly. Camunda is relatively cheaper. There is not much difference in pricing of IBM and PEGA. For large licensing, there are discounts as well."
"Its price is on the higher side, and it can be improved. Its licensing is on a yearly basis. There are no additional costs."
"IBM could improve the price. It is far too expensive."
"IBM BPM is expensive, so most large companies opt for IBM based on their licensing options."
"Starting out with Express can also help reduce the cost for adopting the product."
"Due to its extensive features and capabilities, the product pricing is more aligned with medium—to large enterprises."
"​We have definitely seen ROI. When we first kicked it off, we said it had to pay for itself within three years, and it did."
"Price wise, IBM BPM is cheaper than other similar solutions and has excellent pricing."
"Without any discount, you need tools that cost roughly between $80,000 to $100,000. That is less than with IBM. And on top of that you need the consulting. That will be another $200,000. So a quarter to a third of a million dollars is needed to use get started with BPM. So I usually recommend to my clients that they begin with a little project, with the community version. That way they don't spend $200,000 or $300,000, they spend $150,000 and zero on software."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
32%
Computer Software Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Government
6%
No data available
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

Which is better, IBM BPM or IBM Business Automation Workflow?
We researched both IBM solutions and in the end, we chose Business Automation Workflow. IBM BPM has a good user interface and the BPM coach is a helpful tool. The API is very useful in providing en...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for IBM BPM?
SAP is more expensive, but IBM BPM is very expensive. If a scale of one to ten is used, I would rate IBM BPM at nine in terms of pricing.
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Comparisons

No data available
 

Also Known As

WebSphere Lombardi Edition, IBM Business Process Manager, IBM WebSphere Process Server
Polymita Business Suite
 

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Overview

 

Sample Customers

Barclays, EmeriCon, Banca Popolare di Milano, CST Consulting, KeyBank, KPMG, Prolifics, Sandhata Technologies Ltd., State of Alaska, Humana S.A., Saperion, esciris, Banco Espirito Santo
Bayer, Grupo Televisa, RCBC, Peavey
Find out what your peers are saying about Camunda, Apache, Pega and others in Business Process Management (BPM). Updated: December 2024.
831,158 professionals have used our research since 2012.